…one writing step at a time

How to Have a Successful #IWSGPit

Oh yes, you are not seeing things. The IWSG (Insecure Writer’s Support Group) has thrown their hat in doing a twitter pitch event. And next week Thursday, July 27th is their first ever pitch event.

Are you an IWSGer? Have you queried your manuscript far and wide and still haven’t received a response? Or rejected more times than you can count? Do you have a manuscript that’s polished and ready to submit to publishers and agents?

Well, #IWSGPit might be your chance to get your baby in front of them.

The rules are simple. One Twitter pitch per hour, between the hours of 8am to 8pm. And per manuscript. That means you get to pitch twelve times!

The pitch must also include genre, age (market audience) and the hashtag #IWSGPit. And most importantly, only publishers/agents can like/heart the pitches they like.

Now that you know the rules, there’s one thing left for you to do. Make your pitches, in the words of Ruby Rhod:

Credit image: Memegenerator.net

Your pitch is your hook, your logline and essence of your story. And it needs to do two things: 1) summarize the story’s central conflict and 2) whet a reader’s appetite to crave more.

How? By introducing the character, stakes (motivation & crisis) and genre. Everything your book is made of. And condensed into 140 characters and less. Like Genie from Aladdin says:

My adult romance manuscript, Dreaming of You and other WIPs aren’t ready. But until then, I plan to use their loglines to help practice writing my pitches. For example:

Dreaming of You

Sharon must survive her ex’s wedding while safeguarding her heart from Justin, the sexy, charming devil from her childhood. #IWSGPit #R #A

Here are some links with tips to write and strengthen your pitches. With practice and polish, you’ll be ready to take on #IWSGPit.:

PS Tweeting 12 pitches is a lot, especially if you’re pitching more than one manuscript. It’s best to schedule your pitches throughout the day using a social media management system or tool. I like to use Hootsuite, but there’s also TweetDeck, TweetSuite, etc.

There’s many more if you want to get specific by subgenre. Urban fantasy is #UF, epic fantasy #EF, paranormal romance #PR, etc. Last pitch party, I think it was #SFFPit last month, there was a Twitter discussion about low fantasy. And what will its hashtag be. But low fantasy is a vaguely described genre and more often than not it can go under the umbrella of other subgenres. Brenda Drake has a good listing of genre and subgenre hashtags: http://www.brenda-drake.com/pitmad/